


Tell Yourself It's Enough

by solfell



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Flash Fic, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 02:02:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solfell/pseuds/solfell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles watches and wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Yourself It's Enough

Sometimes, Stiles just watches the way Derek moves. It sounds weird when he puts it into words in his head—watching Derek move—but he can’t lie to himself about this. It happens. And when it does, Stiles feels bruised and burdened deep in his stomach, and tight flickers of light ricochet in his chest, flutter at the base of his throat.

At first, it’s incomprehensible. It’s stupid and annoying and why can’t he just look away? Why can’t he ignore the way Derek moves, how self-possessed he is in this one thing, how easily one action flows into the next?

It’s jealously, Stiles reasons. People call him spaz. They duck and cover when he starts to speak, because that means he starts to flail. They keep him on the bench, won’t sit next to him in class. He pin balls around his life, barely on this side of “out of control.” There’s an impressive stash of Neosporin and Band-Aids under the kitchen sink and in the linen closet because Stiles always finds a way to hurt himself. He stumbles into accidents, often literally; it’s almost become a habit. His knees and elbows are scarred to hell from childhood falls and scrapes and…

Derek doesn’t have scars, werewolf healing and all. But he probably never tripped over his own feet, never stumbled over disconnected limbs. 

It takes time, but Stiles realizes jealousy doesn’t cover everything. Yes, he would love to be the freaking Swan Queen, but that’s not everything. It’s not everything because, well?

Stiles  _wants_. He watches Derek move, sees the tilt of his head, the roll of his shoulders, the smooth gait of his walk and—Stiles wants. He wants to feel those movements under his hands, he wants to trace the lines and bends and angles of Derek’s body, wants to press his tongue against Derek’s throat, feel him swallow. He wants to feel Derek move against him, he wants to move with him, to mimic Derek’s grace, to find some sort of symbiotic equilibrium against Derek’s body.

God, he wants, but he can’t have. There are rules to his reality. Rules that state he is meant to look but not touch, at least not like that. Touching for the sake of touching will shatter the strange, fledgling trust Stiles and Derek have built. It would bring everything crashing down—he can see it now in his head, Derek drawing back, shoulders hunched against the world, jaw tight. Sometimes, Stiles imagines disgust or repulsion in Derek’s eyes, sometimes it’s fear or anger but it doesn’t matter because Stiles is never going to find out.

He keeps his hands to himself, trying to keep himself contained—arms folded over his chest, tucked in his pockets, tugging at his hair or typing out a text. He mouths off, maintains the spiky relationship he has with Derek, and berates himself when he slips up and gets a moment of Derek’s skin or shirt beneath his fingers. 

Stiles is getting used to the ache. Just like when he was a kid, tripping and falling and scraping his knee, he got used to the throb of something trying to heal over itself. 

He’ll get used to this, too.


End file.
